mem card: "compassionate disruption": 10 july

This is everyday mind. A woman in North Carolina called the cops on sculpted Jesus. He'd not be a vagrant, she said, or need our care. His form is scary after dark, he looks so real. There are holes in his bronze feet. Compassion means to suffer with, or suffer as. Disruption is to rend apart with violence. Paradox can't cover them like a tarp, or a blanket. Paradox is a box too small for them to fit, especially their feet. I told my co-worker in London, 1980, that I watched the bums at lunch and she laughed. I had to say tramps: those men in dark coats in a park full of tulips and older lovers on the Thames. I was the nomad & they a counter-citizenry of the poor. We have privatized blame: give us your blankets, your medications, your shopping carts. We offer you the right to disappear, or to pay a fine for being seen. Can you define table and chair for us, asked a man who needed them for his busking. They'll just sit in wheelchairs and pretend, he added.

                                                                  --10 July 2014

Notes:

--"everyday mind": Dogen

--"compassionate disruption": Mayor Kirk Caldwell, on sweeps of the homeless

--some language from public testimony before the Honolulu City Council, 7/9/14 

--thank you to Catherine Kong for bringing Jesus to my attention.